The Ingenious Crosspicking of Gillian Welch's "Scarlet Town"

The Ingenious Crosspicking of Gillian Welch's "Scarlet Town"

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Format: Sibelius digital score with tabs and standard notation (.pdf)

There are many words that I could use to describe Dave Rawlings' playing on 'Scarlet Town': inventive, ingenious, serpentine, and celestial come to mind. The brilliance lies in his use of open strings, with a high capo placement, to generate scalular melodies as well as counter-intuitive drone tones.

For example, the song is in D modal minor (in reference to capo), and Dave is using his open high E string as a drone - which is the 9th of the key! Similar to their earlier tune 'Caleb Meyer,' this creates a tonal ambiguity that is positively rapturous.